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Monoresearch
Participant
October 9, 2019
Question

Changing the tone or colour of pure whites

  • October 9, 2019
  • 2 replies
  • 2972 views

Hi folks.  I am trying to work out how to change the tone or colour of something that is pure white in lightroom. So imagine if you have a photo with areas of white (over exposure), and you want to give all those white areas a tint of colour. 

 

I can't find any adjustment tooks that let me do this. I can increase/decrease the highlights but that creates more/less contrast, I can't actially change/add colour to anything that is pure white. 

 

Any guidance from a Lightroom master is really appreicated.

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    2 replies

    Theresa J
    Community Expert
    Theresa JCommunity Expert
    Community Expert
    October 11, 2019

    You could take the white slider (not the highlights) all the way to the left. This will put a flat grayish looking color into pure white. I would try using an adjustment brush with the whites all the way to the left, and a color tint. This should give you some tone, but getting it to look good, or natural will be a challenge. Photoshop is a better tool for this.

    Monoresearch
    MonoresearchAuthor
    Participant
    October 17, 2019
    Thanks yes I tried this but it doesn't look natural and ends up with a fringed effect where the edges of colours met
    Rob_Cullen
    Community Expert
    Rob_CullenCommunity Expert
    Community Expert
    October 10, 2019

    In my experience, Lightroom (both versions), because they work as Parametric editors they cannot change the pixels in an image. Your brush will only add a color tint where image tones are identified (and not on pure white where no tones exist).

    You will need to 'Save' (or Export) the photos to an RGB file (TIFF, JPG, PSD)  and edit these in another editor like (Pixel based) Photoshop, etc, where a brush can paint any color.

    Regards. My System: Windows-11, Lightroom-Classic 15.1.1, Photoshop 27.3.1, ACR 18.1.1, Lightroom 9.0, Lr-iOS 10.4.0, Bridge 16.0.2 .
    Monoresearch
    MonoresearchAuthor
    Participant
    October 17, 2019
    I had a feeling, I'm surprised though, I thought maybe they could have created some form of adjustments that essentially enables you to introduce colour into pure white. I can do it in photoshop, but I want to be able to automate it across hundreds of images, and taking the manual route will be very the intensive.
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